This is all news to me, but in an article in Foreign Policy, Peter Savodnik argues that Russia has given up on its quest to build itself back into a superpower, and is instead settling for the push for “a new international system” and other institutions and coalitions of multilateralism.  The rub of it is that Russia can’t afford to keep up the confrontation status quo with Washington in the midst of an economic crisis.  If Russia wants to get more involved in rule-based international institutions, that can only be a good thing, if they are willing to follow the rules.

The basic answer is that Moscow, after years of trying unsuccessfully to reclaim its superpower status, has concluded that a new system is needed. Of course, a greatly weakened Russia is in no position to coauthor, with the United States, a new geopolitics. But it can initiate a conversation meant to transcend the asymmetries and tensions of the past two decades — tensions that were manageable until recently but no longer appear so.